The authors seek to measure the potential benefit of reducing the likelihood of economic crises (defined as Depression-style collapses of economic activity). Based on the observed frequency of Depression-like events, they estimate this likelihood to be approximately one in every 83 years for the...

The authors' aim in this paper is to obtain a measure of the potential benefit of reducing the likelihood of economic crises. The authors define an economic crisis as a Depression-style collapse of economic activity. Based on the observed frequency of Depression-like events, the authors estimate...

The Great Depression in the United States was largely the result of changes in economic institutions that lowered the normal or steady-state market hours per person over 16. The difference in steady-state hours in 1929 and 1939 is over 20 percent. This is a large number, but differences of this...

There is now a great deal of empirical evidence that business cycle fluctuations contain asymmetries. The asymmetries found in post-war U.S. data are inconsistent with the behavior of the U.S. economy in the Great Depression. In a model where business cycle asymmetries are produced by rational...

This paper reviews The Defining Moment, edited by Michael D. Bordo, Claudia Goldin, and Eugene N. White. The volume studies how the Great Depression changed government policies, including changes in monetary policy, fiscal policy, banking policy, agricultural policy, social insurance, and...